Showing posts with label Brief 06 - Dr Me. Show all posts

OUGD603: Evaluation (Brief 6)

by Roxxie Blackham on Tuesday, 21 October 2014

I was quite surprised with myself when working on this brief with Dr Me! I don't usually enjoy designing vinyl covers, but I found the workshop with Dr Me really enjoyable, as we were encouraged to work off the computer and see what we could come up with by making collages or drawings etc.


I worked with Sophie on this project, who I've worked with before so I kind of knew how she works. I think that we came up with some good ideas together and worked well in collaboration for the day. Although Sophie had some really cool ideas, we both preferred my vinyl cover and even Dr Me thought that we had a really interesting concept going on. I think that this vinyl cover is definitely something for my portfolio, as I'm really proud of what I produced in a few hours and it shows that I am capable of designing vinyl covers if I ever need to in the future!

I didn't really enjoy working on the second half of the brief - the Odonis Odonis poster. I felt as though the music of the band and their logo were really confusing as they gave off completely different vibes. The only bit I liked in the poster design was the blurred out faces that I created on Photoshop! I think that the rest of the layout was very rushed, as we only had about an hour to produce the poster as we had gotten a bit carried away with our vinyl designs and worked over time on those. I think that the poster was also difficult to work with as we only had a small amount of body copy to use, so it felt really empty! I think that parts of the poster showed consideration and other parts showed that we were rushed and didn't really know what to do for it.

I think that this workshop was really useful and inspiring as Dr Me had a completely different way of working on their briefs than most people that we've had come in and hold workshops at uni. I liked the fact that they would work off the computer first and then digitalise their pieces, which is something that coincides with my own design practice.

OUGD603: Dr. Me Workshop (Brief 6)

by Roxxie Blackham on Monday, 20 October 2014

Brief 1
To produce a vinyl cover for Evian Christ's mix called Duga-3. The client requested that the 10hz ticking noise was reproduced somehow in the album art.

We were asked to collaborate with set partners in the class, my partner was Sophie Abell. Sophie and I decided to listen to the mix and write down initial thoughts and ideas. We also researched into what Duga-3 was and this gave us a more focused insight.

Our initial thoughts:
- Trippy
- Hypnotic
- Kaleidoscope
- Windchimes
- Screechy
- Ambient
- Underwater
- Dramatic
- Traffic
- Motorway
- Tunnels

After research into Duga-3 we came up with the following thoughts:
- Russia
- Chernobyl
- Silence
- Deserted
- Radioactive
- Uninhabitable
- Steel yard
- Radio waves
- 10Hz
- Russian Woodpecker
- Mind control
- Structure
- Soviet
- Tapping
- Circular base

We spoke about several ideas, and then decided to work on something based around the idea that the Duga-3 was nicknamed the "Russian Woodpecker". We went to the mac suite and printed off several relevant images, including images of woodpeckers. Using tracing paper, we both sat and drew different design ideas.

My Ideas:


I thought it would be interesting to try and enrapture the movement of a woodpecker, so I traced over the image of a woodpecker using simple lines over and over to make it look like the woodpecker was pecking.

I then played around with this idea on Illustrator..


At first I traced over the drawing and played with the colours to add some Russian communist colours into the design.


II also played with how the drawing could look in a repeated circle. This started to look a bit too chaotic and messy, so I thought about simplifying the drawing and working with the singular woodpecker..


I then played around with some more ideas..


Playing on the idea of movement of a woodpecker, I blurred the line drawing to make it look like fast movement caught in action. I quite liked this idea, but felt it was a bit too simple and straight forward.

That's when I thought of repeating the singular woodpecker in a full circle to see what would happen.


I really liked this effect and showed Sophie who also really liked how it looked. But we both thought it might be a bit too intense, and the colour might need some consideration. So I created another pattern and changed the colour...


This really didn't work that well, and was a bit like the eye of Sauron... So I simplified the pattern and asked Dr Me who told me to try inverting the black and white colours and add some simple text, and this was the final design..



I was really pleased with this outcome as it was different to what I usually produced yet still worked well! Dr Me were also impressed and said that it met the brief perfectly.

Brief 2
To create a poster for Odonis Odonis using the body copy given..

For brief 2, we listened to some music by Odonis Odonis and came up with the following poster. We didn't have that much time to work on it, as we had concentrated on brief 1 for a bit too long! I used an image of the band and altered their faces to make them look blurry..

Before

After

Sophie and I thought that this worked really well, so Sophie went through creating the poster design with me on my laptop..


I wasn't entirely pleased with final outcome, but I think that's because we lacked time so couldn't play around with the type layout properly to create something impressive. It was also annoying that the logo created for the band already really didn't suit their image, so we ended up designing around the logo aesthetic, which I didn't think suited the band at all.